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Here I am, a long time since I last wrote. I was very busy working on a project of mine night and day. This is actually a novel, which is now almost finished and that, I hope, will soon be in bookstores.
Now that I’m no longer worried about the adventures of Isabella and Santiago, I can take care of photography, my greatest passion.
I’ve been housebound for months writing so I had no time to take pictures. I have in my raw folder some shots of the Mont Blanc peaks in clouds, worth to be edited and published, but I only had time to look at these two. others coming soon!

I tidied up my photo archive. You can’t keep everything! Even if every time I dragged a file to the trash I felt a pang!
However, as I opened folders left behind for years, I found this shots of my mother-in-law a few years ago, during summer. I wanted to document the creation of the famous panzerotti from Apulia (Apulia is a region in Southern Italy). These are a kind of pancake stuffed with mozzarella and tomato sauce… delicious!
Certainly they’re not easy to make: it takes patience, technique and strong arms to work the doughby by hand. Then the paste should be left at least two hours before it can be stretched and cutted. My mother-in-law makes sure it’s wrapped in a blanket and placed in the middle of her bed, absolutely in the middle and absolutely her bed… So, if you want to try, let me know in time!

I proposed to Fotoup.net a report on the situation of the Arctic region, between Russia and other countries that want to exploit the immense deposits of oil under the polar cap.
It has been published here.

I’m back from a trip of a kind I’ve always loved. Far places, awesome landscapes, lots of kilometers in my real view and lots of pictures, of course!
It was quite a long time since the last time I allowed myself to live such a strong adventure. More or less since my daughter born.
I’m so happy I had the chance to share this incredible experience with her. She’s happy too and she’s come back grown up and changed by this trip. She has already chosen the next stop: India…

But this blog is about photography!
This time I rolled my dice and I left with a light bag. Well, I knew my equipment wasn’t enough for a safari and in effect as soon as I arrived I realized it was even far worse that I tought! For sure, there were many other travellerss better organized and most part non-professional protographers. well, I left Milano with:

D700 and 24-70mm (14-24mm also in my bag)
D7000 and 70-300 mm

While I was quite sure the first pair would have been functional, I was uncertain about the value of the second pair.
I coulden’t find anyone approving my D7000 (not for a professional photographer), not to talk about my 70-300mm: too short, not enough sharply defined, useless during a safari.
I had to change my mind and you can judge from my pictures now.
Sometime the little one was even more trusty that the bigger one. A little bit slower in autofocuing, a lot quicker and noiseless in shooting, lot lighter and handy.
By the way, since I’m so devoted to a photographer duty, I brought the tripod around for all way trough South Africa… Never used!
Whoever says he used a tripod on a safari jeep, lies! Keep it in your mind. Actually there were some brave men who tied to do that and I could see the suffering on their faces…
Going back to the D7000, there is one big bug: in the dark, just after the sunset, was a mess. Maybe the low quality lens wasn’t helping, but still after the sunset was impossible to take a decent picture.
No complaints about D700: reliable as always.

One last say: Coolpix P300 that Nikon sent me is the best compact camera I’v ever used.

I hiked today with Giuseppe, my mountain guide. We went to the Deffeys dew, on the road to the top of Mount Ruitor. Since we started, the sky was very cloudy and when we arrived at the mountain dew it started to rain a lot! Luckily I had with me my usual cape which has been so useful to me in Nepal and continues to be here too! Anyway, I took some pictures and I am very pleased with them. I posted the shots in my flickr gallery. I managed to photograph also two baby groundhogs, playing on the rocks near the path … They were so busy in their games that did not notice me until I was really close… Exciting!

I arrived here a week ago and I did not waste my time! Between a walk and another, I was surrounded by bright green and the light of these enchanted places. An opportunity to try my new lens, a 70-300 mm. It’s a cheap lens (by the way, I found it second-hand), but in my opinion very practical, lightweight and multi-purpose. I am very pleased with my last purchase!!

Yesterday I was asked to write my short biography to go with an article that will be released soon about “L’Amo”.
I wrote lots of biographies, but never my own. It was not so easy to fit into a few lines writing an entire lifetime! I concentrated on my interest in photography which, on second thoughts, is not just an activity… it’s part of me and represents me. It’s the way I express myself, the way I communicate my vision of life.

Here’s what I wrote:

“After classical studies, she earned a degree in archeology, but her interest is already addressed elsewhere.
Formed first in the school of journalism and then in that of photography, she applies the criteria of the first to the second, using photography to investigate the reality, attempting to return it in the eyes of viewer as objectively as possible and pure.
That’s why she chooses natural light almost exclusively, dropping the use of flash. When not possible, she inserts the artificial light in her pictures clearly and provocatively, to denounce its presence explicitly.
That is to say: no tricks, no cheating.
The sensitivity of the photographer, so attentive to the colors and shapes, blends with the critical eye and the curiosity of the journalist to draw out from daily things a different story every time”.